Yesterday, Pennsylvania Hempland Security had a birthday. We are two years old. I started this page on November 10, 2012. I was feeling this tremendous energy. Six days earlier history was made. The voters of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize cannabis! I KNEW that we had a tremendous opportunity here in Pennsylvania. I knew that the wave of interest was coming and it was going to spread all over America and the world. Yet here in Pennsylvania nothing seemed to be happening. There was no movement to speak of. We had a few dozen dedicated activists involved with Philly NORML and a handful of people involved with Pittsburg NORML. There were a few small Facebook pages. Over the years we had heard about scattered demonstrations in Philly and Penn State. Three years earlier there had been a medical cannabis bill introduced to Pennsylvania and in 2010 it had even received a hearing. However, the new medical cannabis bills were just sitting there dying with nobody really fighting for them. Everything here was dead and there seemed to be no hope. I had been teaching about the history of hemp in Pennsylvania as well as the great potential of hemp as a cash crop for the previous 15 years. A lot of people already sort of knew about me, my book and my activism. So, I thought that it was time I stepped up my game, threw my hat into the ring and lead a revolution right here in Pa. Within a week or so Pennsylvania Hempland Security quickly got 300 followers. Today, we number 9,494 people but I am most grateful to those first 300. They are the ones who have seen everything we have done for the last two years and how far weve come and how those efforts are paying off. When I created this page, the goal since the beginning was not just to create a cool Facebook change. From day one the goal was to build a real movement that would create real change and lead us to victory. Within two weeks I announced our first rally, the Pennsylvania Hempland Security Rally in downtown Lancaster on December 8, 2012. Attendance was low, about three dozen of us. However, we got a big article on the front page of the Lancaster Sunday News the next day and they gave lots of great quotes and information. One week later, Philly NORML, N.a. Poe and the Panic Hour held their first Smoke Down Prohibition rally at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. When they held their second rally in February of 2013, I was invited by Poe to speak at the rally and started a year long adventure. A few weeks after our first rally, in December of 2012 we started to hear our first rumors that state Senator Daylin Leach was going to introduce the very first bill for full legalization of cannabis ever in the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. In January of 2013 the rumors were confirmed and in February of 2013 I had the honor of speaking at Daylin Leachs historic press conference in the state capitol of Harrisburg when he introduced his landmark legislation. In March and April of 2013 I attended Smoke Down Prohibition III and IV in Philadelphia and I knew it was time to get more going on in Lancaster. So I started planning another rally and in May we had the Lancaster Hemp Rally. It was a big success, over 250 people showed up and a good time was had by all. We received more media coverage. Then came the epic battle and showdown at the Liberty Bell for Smoke Down Prohibition V in mid May. That represented the forces that be fighting back with vigor against our movement. They came in with force. A month later in June at Smoke Down Prohibition VI it was part two of the battle, this time going up against Homeland Security in riot gear. They were doing everything they could to shut down the movement. I was going to let them. I came up with a plan that I called The Hemp Freedom Tour. In July, we had the Lancaster Hemp Freedom Rally in downtown Lancaster. About 150 people attended. Cops tried to shut us down but we didnt let them. We got on TV and in the newspapers again. Around that same time we heard about a candidate for governor of Pennsylvania named John Hanger. He took up our cause. John Hanger invited me to give a speech at his press conference in Harrisburg where he announced his three step plan to reach full legalization in Pennsylvania by 2017. We threw all of our support behind him. In late July I spoke again at Smoke Down Prohibition VII, which had turned into a sit-in. The next day we had our rally in York, the York Hemp Freedom Rally, where we again received great media coverage in newspapers, TVs and blogs. In August we took the show to Reading for the Reading Hemp Freedom Rally, again, receiving great press on TV and the newspapers. John Hanger was a featured guest speaker. We were taking John from 1% in the polls as a relatively unknown to 10% in the polls in a field of 8 contenders and elevating him to rock star status. Our support of John Hanger and tireless work on his campaign FORCED all other major contenders for the Democratic nomination to support medical cannabis and decrim, including the eventual winner - Tom Wolf. Then came Smoke Down Prohbition VIII in late August. I spoke there a bit again and when I came back home from Philly walked into a disaster. There had been a fire at my home and I would never again spend another night there. I lost 90% of my clothing and some other important things. I was not going to let the setback stop me. I decided to organize the Lancaster Hemp Harvest Rally in October of 2013. Another fun, inspiring and successful rally, although this one was ignored by city and the press. Which was okay in one respect as it gave us a bit more freedom to let loose a bit downtown. In November we went to a big rally in Harrisburg organized by Dana Ulrich and Lolly Bentch Myers and a few other great ladies that we came to know and love as the Mama Bears. They had gotten a new medical cannabis bill introduced, a bill we came to know as SB 1182. By this time, I had a new partner in my life, Erica McBride. We fell in love and I moved in with her in Berks County, right outside of Reading. (I had lived previously in Ephrata in Lancaster County.) We had been friends and she came to all my rallies and I saw her at a bunch of rallies. Erica started out making artwork and graphics for our rallies. Then she started making memes for the page. Then she started helping me to organize the rallies and before I knew it she has become a powerful, intelligent, creative and effective partner in this whole thing. We decided that we would put together a rally in Harrisburg, right there in the halls of power. We invited Lolly and Dana into the planning with us and we put together a solid lineup of outstanding speakers. On March 31 of 2014 we got 300 people to attend a rally in the capitol at 10:00am on a Monday. It was profound and it was big. That got more media attention than all of our rallies combined up until that time. Of course there was lot of other stuff going on. I attended a hearing on decriminalization at Philadelphia City Hall as council herd testimony that would later lead to their historic decriminalization bill. There were town halls in Adams and York counties and several other places that we attended. I or we attended panel discussions and debates in West Chester University, Penn State Berks, Harrisburg and Philadelphia, plus the Mid Atlantic NORML Convention in Philly. In June of this year we held the Lancaster Cannabis Reform Rally and had a great time. Bob Marleys daughter spoke, Makeda Marley. We took it to York in July and had the York Cannabis Reform Rally. Then in August we had the Wilkes Barre Cannabis Reform Rally, attended by nearly 300 people and we continued to get in the newspapers and on TV. We attended both Senate Hearings in the Law and Justice Committee in January and June. We did some interviews and were doing everything we could to get the word out. In May Erica and I stood on the steps of the Rotunda with state senator Daylin Leach and about 20 others and we threatened Governor Tom Corbett with a sit-in in his office if he did not meet with the Mama Bears and others who could benefit from SB 1182. In order to avoid the sit in Corbett agreed to a limited expansion of clinical trials of CBD oil for a couple hundred kids. There were lots of other things too. In September after several months of negotiations and working with Lancaster City Council we got them to become the first municipality to pass a resolution in favor or medical cannabis. Harrisburg City Council followed up with a similar resolution just a few weeks later. We met and got to know our next governor, Tom Wolf, a little bit. We spoke to him for several minutes each on three separate occasions. I gave him a copy of my book about the history of the hemp industry in Pennsylvania, Hempstone Heritage, thanked him for his support of medical cannabis and decrim and asked him to support industrial hemp as well. Erica and I have had numerous meetings with a growing number of state senators and representatives. We are starting to know our way around a little bit and we have the ability to get things done. One of our accomplishments that we are most proud of is we have earned the backing for a Pennsylvania hemp bill. On January 10 state senators Mike Folmer and Judy Schwank are having a press conference at our Pennsylvania Hemp Conference event where they will announce the introduction of the Pennsylvania Hemp Bill. We are putting together the coalition that will pass this bill and we are confident that we can get this done. Also, we are continuing the dialogue with Lancaster City Council and Reading City Council and the mayor here to make progress on decriminalization measures or resolutions of support for statewide decriminalization. Another thing that many followers of this page may not have picked up on is that Erica and I now have organized into a 501 (C)4 non profit organization called Keystone Cannabis Coalition. I am the Executive Director but Erica is an equal partner and does a huge share of the workload. Albert Taylor does some work behind the scenes as Assistant Director and he also works for Lancaster NORML. Attorney Richard B. MacDonald is a consultant for us and we work with a lot of people to make things happen. We have gotten to know a lot of our legislators and we network with every activist organization in the state. We know what is going on and are right on the tip of the spear of this movement. I have actually left out a bunch of things we did in this summation over the last two years. This is the abbreviated version. Counting the rallies that I have organized myself or with the help of others, and the rallies that I spoke at or attended in the last two years I have attended 23 rallies, 4 press conferences, 4 or 5 town halls, 1 lecture, 5 panel discussion and debates, a bunch of meetings, 4 city hall meetings, multiple lobbying trips and meetings, and much more. I also owe some thanks to Jose from The Arcane Front. He made memes for us in 2013 and shared them on his page and other pages he was involved in. Thousands of you found this page through Jose. This has been a thrilling two years. We didnt just watch it unfold, we joined in and helped to make it happen. The next two years will also be exciting. We expect our work to finally start paying dividends. We expect that within this next two year legislative session we will have a medical cannabis bill passed and thousands enrolled in the system. We expect industrial hemp to be passed and we expect statewide decriminalization to also occur within this time. Weve been fighting so hard but we are not going to let up. We want more people to join us and make their voices heard. We are not going to win, even with Governor Tom Wolf unless we all join in and keep pushing. Pennsylvania Hempland Security is a good tool for sharing information but not as conducive for conversation. Thats why we recently created a Facebook group. If you want to participate in the discussion come to our group. Just do a FB search for Keystone Cannabis Coalition and you will find us. Ask to join in and if you are from Pennsylvania we will let you in. Also, check out our website at Keystonecannabiscoalition.org. Happy Anniversary Hempland! Les Stark Author, Hempstone Heritage Executive Director, Keystone Cannabis Coalition Founder, Pennsylvania Hempland Security
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 00:02:38 +0000
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